The Question

Accounts of Indian politics since 2014 commonly describe a dominant-party system: the BJP has won three consecutive general elections, governs most of the population directly or through allies, and has reshaped the agenda of public debate. Critics describe the same period as one of majoritarian consolidation; supporters describe it as the overdue correction of an older elite consensus. Both accounts share an assumption that is rarely tested: that electoral dominance has translated into dominance across Indian society, economy and institutions.

This book tests that assumption. It treats power not as a single quantity held by whoever wins elections, but as the sum of positions in many separate arenas: the population and its loyalties, organised society, money, the production of knowledge, the media, elections, the instruments of the State, and the external actors who play a part in Indian affairs. In each arena it asks the same question, measured the same way: what share of the arena is held by Hindutva-aligned actors?

1.1Definition

Power, for the purposes of the Atlas, is the capacity to shape outcomes in an arena: to win votes, command budgets, set agendas, decide cases, fund institutions or move opinion. The Atlas does not measure power directly. It measures observable indicators of that capacity (votes, seats, rupees, audiences, citations, appointments, rulings) and assigns each indicator to the side whose capacity it represents.

The two-sided framing is a simplification. Indian politics contains many actors with their own interests, and the opposition to Hindutva is a coalition rather than a camp. The simplification is adopted because it permits a single, comparable measure across very different arenas, and because the contest between Hindutva-aligned actors and their opponents is the principal axis of national politics in the period studied. Where the binary does violence to the evidence, chapters say so and the affected units are reported separately.

1.2What the book does not do

The Atlas does not assess the merits of either side's positions, the legality or morality of particular actions, or the intentions of individuals. It does not classify people by religion, caste or name; individuals enter only through their public roles and documented public acts. Its findings are descriptive. Readers will draw their own conclusions about what, if anything, should follow from them.